


Heartbeat

by Charolastra



Category: Hamilton - Miranda, Hamilton - Miranda (Broadway Cast) RPF
Genre: Aaron Burr Has Anxiety, Death, Heart Attacks, Human Disaster Aaron Burr, Human Disaster Alexander Hamilton, Past Character Death, Poor Aaron Burr, Violent Thoughts, stroke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-11
Updated: 2019-09-11
Packaged: 2020-10-14 14:11:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20602106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Charolastra/pseuds/Charolastra
Summary: At the twilight of his life, Aaron Burr ponders all he's been through; College, his family, Alexander Hamilton."Had I read Sterne more and Voltaire less, I should have known the world was wide enough for Hamilton and me."





	Heartbeat

"I'll just be in the next room."

A noise. His cousin lifted the tin tray of food, hardly touched, onto his hand. He rose gradually to his feet, watchful eyes examining the older man's face for any movement all the while. There was hardly any to speak of besides the dark orbs, glancing freely about the room.

_Bump-bump. Bump-bump._

"Okay," murmured the bedridden male, his voice raspy and quiet. The roaming eyes landed upon the original speaker.

Aaron Burr shifted in the bed before him. At length, he lay back on the pillow behind his head, a tremulous sigh escaping his lips. His hands were presently at his sides, fiddling with the threads dangling from the ends of his coat. He and his cousin exchanged stares for the briefest moment.

In the exchange was the silent condemning to, and the reluctant acceptance of, an inevitable fate. Aged eyes met a younger stare and held it, conveying a story with no conceivable end or beginning; only the events endured through time. The youth bartered a melancholy mood, permeating the air about the room. He reached out and placed his hand overtop Aaron's for a single second. The tiniest shred of sympathy echoed from his touch and through to Aaron--although, perhaps it was just the warmth meeting his ice cold skin.

_Bump-bump. Bump-bump._

Another look and the connection was broken.

"Call if you need me, sir," he said, respectfully, and relinquished his hand.

Aaron Burr watched his temporary caregiver turn and walk carefully from the room. The door was left ajar, and as his footfalls descended the nearby steps, the room was returned to an uncomfortable silence.

Aaron was dying.

Just days ago he'd suffered a sudden stroke. Then another, and he wasn't sure how many then, until he was aware he had little control over his own body for what seemed innumerable days. Upon regaining the most basic faculties, he was permitted to his cousin's home to be taken into his care as he declined in strength.

_Bump-bump. Bump-bump._

And what a sorry decline it had been.

A week he'd been here, slowly prostrated by the sickness until now, where he remained bedridden with barely the strength to change into nightclothes--which he hadn't done.  
It was later evident to Aaron, by the lack of medicines or even talk of his diagnosis, that his cousin endeavored only to make him comfortable until he...

Until he went to greet those he'd known.

It was not a decision of whether the long-suffering man was ready or not, not a decision of whether he had more to do or not-- it was not his decision at all but, he believed, that of God's.  
Knowing this, his cousin had already prayed with and for him without request, despite his attempts to conceal the truth of Burr's situation. His efforts had eased his mind for the time being, and now, without trepidation, the older man lay waiting.

But the wait was more treacherous, he stated later to his cousin, than a sudden death would be.

Aaron's gaze travelled lethargically up to the beige ceiling, where he studied the tiny textures dancing along it. His heart was again thumping in his chest, now pacing along without evincing much sign of trouble.

Earlier, he'd entertained the thought that perhaps the sudden failures were the offspring of his many guilts.

_Bump-bump. B-Bump-bump. Bump-bump. Bump-bump..._

Curse the guilt-laden heart.

Residing in that place was happiness, regret, pain, hurt. His wife and daughter. His parents. His friendships and losses. Like water down a mountainside, it carved rivets into it, leaving it just a little more empty as the years went by. The result was upon him now as he lay by himself, pondering quietly on his mistakes and joys.

Joys there were many of: the birth of his daughter, his graduation from Princeton, his meeting friends. Occasional periods during the war.

Aaron's tired features contorted, briefly, into a smile. Reclined on the bed was a man of an only slightly adventurous life, but the simpler memories brought his ruminating mind a surprising contentment in the moments he lay largely unmoving, fingers fidgeting with the lapel of his burgundy jacket. The fabric slid between the pads of his fingers easily, soft to the touch, and something agitated within Aaron shrank with every stroke. A sense of calm was found by way of the little bit of cloth.

However guilt, explicitly the corrosive guilt, left a cavernous maw of a gap in his conscience, eating away at him without respite since the day he realized his last, fatal mistake.   
The smile faltered and vanished, running from his face.

Unexpectedly, it was not the death of his families and friends that built up the most within his conscience, but the weight of a murder that he so regretted committing. The thoughts sprang to his vulnerable mind like wolves pouncing on sick prey.

For years, Burr had brushed aside the idea he had been wrong in his challenge; No, he believed he'd never been more right. Battling irrelevance and more and more of the dishonor thrown in his face, had he no choice but to challenge the sole man who threw it?

Perhaps not.

Perhaps not, and now it weighed in like a storm cloud, wind pulling at his heart, torrential rain flooding from his closed eyes and muffled thunder from his lying mouth. A simple utterance of regret could do little to ease the terrific weathering, and try as he might, the perceived 'notion' he was wrong in his challenge grew more and more realistic each time he dared dwell on the idea and the events leading to the demise of an old friend. The apology that rose in his throat like a foul bile found no ears worthy to fall upon.   
The one most deserving of his apology lay safe in his grave.

_Bump-bump._

...

But hadn't he been proud?

Chewing his lip, the man felt a wave of sadness descend on him. There was, at this point, no use in reviving himself from the pensivity.  
He had been.  
Aaron was never a happier man than when he shot Alexander; though it shook him to the core, taking the life of a fellow man in such a way, it was, ostensibly, an end to a relationship cracking at the very foundations and an end to the political destruction.

As his younger self he would boast, he would gloat in that haughty way, saying, with the most pride dripping from his words, "I killed Alexander Hamilton." With complete confidence he believed he'd solved all his problems, and then some.  
One-hundred birds, one stone.

It was at that time he began to abandon his penchant for deep thinking, and once he'd shown a single sign of retiring it, it fled from him as easily as sand through a sieve, leaving behind a mind only growing the short-term, near ludicrous expectations. Never had he regained it until he was far into seniority.

Only after the most excruciating thoughts would the pride freeze to doubt; only then would the icy doubt lock up his teeth; only then would the new thoughts melt the frost and have it fall from his lips like rain from a cloud-heavy sky, forced with an air of sadness unparalleled by any he'd felt before: "_I killed Alexander Hamilton_."   
Supplanted was the self-confidence, in its place an incessant murmur of _"I was wrong._"

He doubted it could be left just at that. The twinge in his heart proved he should rather say, _"I killed Alexander Hamilton _and_ myself."_  
Because, in essence, he had. Pulling the trigger meant he personally inked his own fate in letters bold and clear. It meant he had for once made a lasting impact like Alexander had, but for all the wrong reasons.

Without dark there was no light.  
Alexander Hamilton's slandering, his derision, his diffusing of rumors, was the only thing keeping Aaron afloat in relevance. The abrasive immigrant was nothing short of a thorny life-preserver; Aaron's lantern in the dark.

Aaron Burr was a cautious genius. Aaron Burr was a Princeton graduate, an expired senator, and a lawyer. Yet Aaron Burr's achievements were reduced, by one man, to something akin to footprints in the sand of a beach, destined to be washed away in the wake of a newer, better achievement.

Alexander Hamilton was brilliant and unremitting. Alexander Hamilton was a candle in a hurricane that would not easily submit to what was given to him. Alexander Hamilton was a mural of colors as intricate as its own meaning. Alexander was more like a footprint in cooling cement, permanent and surviving no matter what--Alexander was this, Alexander was that.

Alexander was the very being of irritation.

Aaron Burr was tired of the derision and the slandering, tired of laying back while his reputation shattered before his own eyes, with Alexander's toxic words being the cause. Aaron was, for once, truly angry, and fought back with a fervor. He was in such a state of animation he never once thought twice of his words when he issued, while saving the caustic comments waiting behind his teeth, a challenge he'd regret.

_Bump-bump. Bump-bump. B-Bump-bump..._

Aaron sighed.

His fingers had stiffened about the edge of his coat. Flexing them slowly, while the cracking of his joints brought noise about the room, filled Aaron with a sudden heat that sadly diminished at once. He found he now shivered on occasion, exacerbating the tremors racking his body.

His eyes scoured the dark skin of his hand, noting every line of his knuckle and every tiny scar and mark. His hand.   
Perhaps he was near ashamed to be staring at the hand which had held the gun.

With a wave of this hand Burr extinguished the candle; in black and white he painted over the mural. Alexander had a future, bright and promising. Aaron drew an abrupt end in his story.

He remembered distinctly his finger curling about the cool metal, the way the shot had jarred his arm rather confoundingly, and how that was that. The bright greens and blues of someone's existence dulled. The eye-catching colors of a brilliant being absorbed by a solitary bullet which shattered and perforated a fleshy case, the colors never to greet the outside world again.

The candle and colors proved to be the only light in Aaron's blackened horizon, for the disdainful stares and calls of 'murderer!' and 'villain!' would forever keep him enveloped in the dark he believed he could fend off. And, Aaron had conceded, the calls were not wrong.   
He'd truly made himself a villain by giving into that devil, jealousy, and the anger. There was no hiding it.  
There was only the thought of wishing, wishing, wishing he could go back and change history.

_Bump-bump. Bump-bump. Bump-bump..._

In the silence, Aaron was again eerily aware of his own heart, presently beating a drowsy and defeated cadence. He wondered, not for the first time, if this was what Alexander had felt: disabled by a sudden dip in energy and lost in a bed, perspiration beading on his forehead. Filled with a sense of calm.

Something was going to happen, but he felt no apprehension.

_Bum-bump-bump..._

It felt wrong; quietly relinquishing his life to his feeble heart. It seemed unjust that a villain of such proportions should die of anything so quick and virtually painless. The only noticeable feeling was that of increasing lethargy.

His heart hiccuped and briefly slowed. Aaron's eyes flew wide as he suddenly felt weightless, then as though he was made of lead when his heart settled back into the oddest form of arrhythmic beating. At length he breathed a second deep breath, calming the thumping in his chest. His knuckles were gradually turning pale as they clasped, with an intensity that never abated, his soft lapels.

_B-bump-bump..._

It may have been a less than enviable end, but he had no choice.   
Aaron inhaled through his nose, drawing up a patch of his coat to hold in his digits. His fingers curled ever so slightly around the brass buttons dotting it, to remain hooked there, comfortable. On the third breath he took, it rattled harshly within his chest, and his muscles felt suddenly restricted; his body urging, in the most gentle of ways, to release himself.

His eyes had already adopted a milky glaze--telltale signs of his soul's abandonment. His gaze sought out the door, still ajar, seeing the light from the next room flowing generously through the gap. Perhaps he should alert his caregiver.  
...

No.  
He decided, with a sort of sigh, there was no point in calling out to his cousin. Just as there had been no point in shooting his ex-friend.

He would discover him soon enough.

_..Bump...._

Aaron forebore a defiant cry or a final catharsis--no chance of freeing his guilty conscience now--and instead offered a prayer for himself. One asking forgiveness, and a warm welcome to his final destination by Alexander.

  
Everything about him had been gradually slowing, and now it was most evident as he was struggling to move anything but his fingers, still grasping the fabric.

  
He mouthed the prayer slowly. His lips found the last words with very little conciseness, and his noiseless sentence petered out before he could finish.

A final exhale in acquiescence.

Aaron's eyes slid shut.


End file.
